Exiled from Florence in 1302, Dante Alighieri led an itinerant life, moving between various courts and locations. Eventually, he accepted the invitation from Guido Novello da Polenta, the lord of Ravenna, to settle in the city.

In Ravenna, Dante concluded the “Divine” Comedy, finding great inspiration for the Paradise, the third part of the work, in the surroundings. In composing this final part, he was undoubtedly inspired by what he had the opportunity to witness in the city—the remnants of Ravenna’s glorious age. The magnificence of Roman and Byzantine mosaics, bearing witness to the historical events in which Ravenna played a central role, as well as the “dense and vivid” pine forest embracing the city, greatly captivated the poet.

Dante spent the last years of his life in Ravenna. His remains were placed in a chapel in the cemetery of the then Franciscan Convent, and since the eighteenth century, they have been preserved in the neoclassical temple located in the area now known as the “Dantean zone.”

The Dante-themed tour will unfold in the city’s area where his tomb and memory are preserved. It includes a visit to the Basilica of San Francesco, where Dante’s funeral was held in September 1321; the Franciscan cloisters housing the poet’s memory, along with the Dante Museum within the same complex; Casa Dante, an exhibition space preserving some Dante-themed works from the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, as well as the Dantean collections of the Classense Library, the local institution that has been collecting the material memory of the Florentine poet since 1865.